Mar 27, 2006

Livery Transplant

"Any colour so long as it's red" seems to be the mantra for 2006 F1 car liveries. Or at least there's a distinct shift into red territory.

That's a good thing if you're McLaren, who cunningly disguised this year's MP4/21 in the Midland colour scheme so that it's less embarrassing when it breaks down - but a bad thing if you're a viewer and have to depend on either your own eyes or James Allen to follow what's going on.

There's Midland in red, black and grey, McLaren in red, black and chrome, Ferrari sticking with red and Honda in a surprisingly BAR-biased red, white and black livery. Then of course there's Toyota in red and white and Super Aguri in white and red.

Toyota's livery is, as ever, a raggedly ugly scheme that looks like someone's just flung a bucket of ketchup at it. If I was a team member I'd be really tempted to sneak into the garages at night with a tiny touch-up brush and sort it out...

Classic liveries though are few and far between. Truly memorable ones become benchmarks of cool branding - JPS Lotus, Martini Brabham, Marlboro McLaren, the gold Warsteiner Arrows, Wolf, and a handful of others.

Mostly though, in trying to stand out, liveries often just become garish or confused: witness cars like the early Benettons - a patchwork of wildly nauseating colours that just flew round the track like extremely quick Noel Edmonds knitwear.

The only recent livery that I could count as an instant classic is BAR's 2004 Chinese GP Friday testcar: a deep midnight blue drenched in a milky way of stars and huge golden 555 logos. Not so much a livery as the world's fastest piece of fine art.

BAR (as they were then) did a number of special Friday designs to mess with their branding and it'll be very a very welcome sight if Honda retain that sense of playfulness this year.

And make it less red while they're at it...

Mar 20, 2006

High Speed Creche

In the same way that dotty old ladies seem convinced that policemen are getting younger, I must admit to having noticed a similar thing with F1 drivers...

Just look at any season review from the 60s or 70s - they're all either lanky moustachioed playboys and medallion men, or haggard looking blokes with combovers and huge muttonchop sideburns.

But look at the new bunch and you can't help wonder whether Bernie's paddock improvements at Spa include a creche, or at the very least some big fluffy toys and Happy Meals...

Take Christian Klien, who recently fought off allegations of a nightclub incident. Think about it and it's obvious he's innocent - for the simple reason that nobody would let him into a nightclub in the first place. Because he looks about twelve.

Seriously... would you??? No, of course you wouldn't - you'd lose your license.
And the 'assault' stuff sounds pretty unlikely too: It'd be like getting savaged by the Andrex puppy.

It must be a real downer for Klien to have spent so long simply being recognised by ITV's James Allen as "the only F1 driver with an earring" - something which is of course no longer true thanks to the chavtastic Tonio Liuzzi (doomed to be referred to by James Allen as "the only F1 driver with 27 earrings").

Another relative youngster, Liuzzi at least looks like he could handle himself in a fight. In fact he looks like he might start a few down the Bluewater shopping centre given half a chance.

Still, they're not all youngsters... At the other end of the scale at least we've got DC - Klien's Uncle David - and Michael Schumacher stacking up the age and experience, and in the case of DC a whole lot of belly laughs and a fun attitude since he left McLaren too.

Schumy has Felipe Massa as his junior: the world's fastest Cabbage Patch Doll, and a very different proposition to Rubens. Massa is surely little more than a useful stopgap in the Scuderia's forward planning of driver line-ups, although the 2006 season is still a monumental opportunity for the tiny Brazilian.

And he'd better not blow it or he'll be sent to his room...

Mar 8, 2006

Hermann Tilke: Bad Track Record

You'd think that as an F1 fanatic I'd be happy that a new season is about to start, and yet I'm not. Why? I'll tell you why.... Hermann Tilke: that's why!

I want the season to kick off on a cool circuit with bags of atmosphere, somewhere like Albert Park in Melbourne. Not on one of the German circuit designer's soulless geometry exercises.

Given that it's such a hot place, it's nothing short of amazing just how cold Bahrain leaves me... Beautiful architecture admittedly, and a surface that looks like it's been dusted down with toothbrushes, but boy is it a bore. A soulless, zig-zagging bore in the middle of a landscape of no discernable features whatsoever.

I have no idea what Bernie sees in Tilke, apart from he pays phenomenal attention to things like plush poncey stands, VIP facilities and, in the case of China, corners "signifying" yin and yang - although they could also "signify" pointless over-design.

He completely sucked the character and grandeur out of Hockenheim, Sepang's not that bad I guess but it's no Spa, Bahrain's Sakhir circuit is blander than anything that ever oozed out of Pop Idol... his only redeeming feature is that he designed the gobsmacking Istanbul Park circuit, which provided some great action last year: a stunning anti-clockwise track packed with some phenomenal turns that just need some half-decent names to make them a bit more memorable.

And what is there to look forward to? Well McLaren and Raikkonen are going to be desperate to finally land those championships, Renault are going to be equally desperate to retain them - especially with Alonso jumping ship at the end of the year.
We'll have Michelin wanting to leave the sport on a high note, Ferrari wanting to put 2005 behind them, and Michael Schumacher pretty keen to show he's not past it.

Added to that, a new and possibly very silly qualifying system, new teams and drivers, new v8 or limited v10 engines (with 2 race lifespans), the return of tyre stops, and - best of all - the return of Britain's Anthony Davidson to Friday drives (thanks to BAR's woeful 2005 constructors' standing) and it could all make for excellent viewing.

Having said that, the new qualifying could also be a downside - as could the new engine rules if you're Mercedes. And the loss of Spa is nothing short of criminal. A mixed bag then... And isn't that just like any season really?

Come Sunday I won't care that it's Bahrain and not Melbourne: F1 will be back, and that's all that matters.

Mar 3, 2006

Hello, Good Evening & Welcome...

Balanced and unbiased F1 cynicism and bile, disguised as comment and delivered to your PC weekly...

Essentially this site is an online archive of all Teletext's "Motor Mouth" columns. These appear on Teletext's digital TV services in the UK - go to ITV1 (on Sky or Freeview) and press TEXT on your remote....
Teletext runs an F1 Extra section throughout the Formula One season and "Motor Mouth", along with a skewed news in brief section "Kitty Litter" supplement the array of hard news and stats with a more colourful, pointy-stick-poking angle on the F1 world, appearing weekly - race or no race.

I actually fancied having a really absurd, ludicrously flashy motorsport type name, but sadly both Penelope Pitstop and Scott Speed are already in use, so I went for "Motor Mouth" instead: what else would you call an F1 grumpypants with anger management issues?

The columns are weekly, and always appear on Teletext on ITV1 (in the UK on digital TV) - though they're not necessarily about the events of the week. They're more of an ongoing, ill-tempered set of mutterings about F1 in general with the odd bit of relevance - something like spending an afternoon in the Max Mosley Sunshine Home for the Terminally Bewildered.

"Motor Mouth" columns are posted online after they have been shown on digital TV, so if you want to read them as soon as they come out, then move to the UK, get digital TV and go to ITV1, press TEXT and go to page 590.

I hope you'll like the columns, and that even if we're not totally in agreement, we're at least on the same wavelength.
Enjoy the season, whoever you support,
MM